The entire sequence but of all the links the one that clearly to me was the most complicated and the most hazardous was the rendezvous bringing them back up from the surface of the moon and and having us meet at the proper time and place and join and go back home together. How did you know that it was going to work that you were going to be able to meet up and return together I mean when I when was that moment when you when you knew this is it we've made it we've made it. Well I did not know I was worried about it it's the rendezvous process is. A relatively straightforward one provided everything goes exactly right but if for example they don't take off from the moon on time if if they're late by a few seconds or a minute then all kinds of bad things start happening and you have to change your entire strategy for bringing the 2 vehicles together Likewise if their gyros let's say their gyroscopes were were tilted a little bit and they went up into some kind of a lopsided or but I might be able to go get them and I might not I had some extra fuel onboard but it's very costly of fuel to change your orbit much especially to change the direction of your orbit and so there were just a lot of unknowns in my mind at least and therefore I was. Pleased beyond measure to see them coming like right down the center line of the highway below me I could see that from the from my computer and from the information coming from their radar that things were going well and as they got closer and closer I started feeling better and better and more and more confident that we were going to carry the whole thing off you wrote that when they return you wanted to give buzz big smooch on the forehead and then you want to embarrass you just shake his hand yeah yeah so you want to hear all about it when I got back in. Yes we we had a lot of things to talk over but not much time because then that's a really busy period there you have to transfer all our Quitman back into the command module get rid of old eagle come swimming around the moon and at the exactly the right time you have to ignite your rocket motor to break the bond of lunar gravity and to establish yourself on a trajectory that's going to come slicing into the earth's atmosphere a couple of days later slicing into the atmosphere in exactly the right angle. It was interesting to me when when you came back down to earth and you landed in the water yes the capsule was upside down. And you had to be careful that you didn't get sick and throw up because it was a dangerous have been if one of you had gotten sick in the suit you were. Well they were worried about are bringing germs back from the moon and we were immediately put into. Quarantine 1st we were in a small container aboard the aircraft carrier and in that container was flown by airplane back to here soon we were put into a quarantine laboratory there so the point was whatever germs we brought with us and we in fact brought nothing strange from the moon but had we brought any germs with us it was a very important that we keep those germs locked up inside that suit with us so that if we'd had to you know and zip the suit and get a real. Possibility existed we might contaminate our home planet here but it would really be a Hypochondriac's delight to come back from a from the moon voyage and then imagine yourself coming down with disease no earth person has ever even to you know heard of yet well we thought the chances of that were extraordinarily remote Neil used to try to explain it by saying if if you multiply very very small number and that is the chances of our bringing any microbes back against a gigantic Lee large number and that is a consequence of infecting the planet what do you get I don't get. A finite entity that's big enough to worry about gas. I want to ask you about another really real momentous space accomplishment in your life and that was in July of 1966 when you were I think the 1st person in space to leave the vehicle and make contact with another space vehicle is that right yes that's that was a was a spacewalk. Leaving Gemini Gemini number 10 and floating over 2 and a Jaina. Another. Unmanned vehicle that had been left in orbit and retrieving from that a Jaina an experiment package and then bringing it back to the Gemini and and I was a little strange and a little bit different and that's not something that you can. Quite choreograph like you can other parts of space you just sort of have to see how it goes as it goes and and I had a few problems I was trailing the some belittle cord and there was there were loose pieces of metal flapping off the end of the chain and I was afraid that the cord was going to get in tangled with the a gene and that I was going to get wound up in a horrible mass of ball. Connecting these 2 spacecraft and John Young it was back in the Gemini would have no choice but to sniff my umbrella called cord and leave me up there and so it was a little tense for a while when you were doing your state's walk what could you actually see. Oh you can see wonderfully well you have the whole world at your feet come roaring in over the Pacific Ocean you can see in one glance all our way from Alaska to Baja California you go go across the United States and something like 6 minutes and if you miss something or not to where you'll be back again in another 90 minutes and get a 2nd look at it this is true when you're inside the spacecraft peering out a small porthole see even more true when you're outside and you know you've got this water at angle view of the whole world below you. Michael Collins speaking to Terry Gross in 198850 years ago tomorrow he piloted the Apollo 11 command capsule as Neil Armstrong became the 1st man to step foot on the moon. After a break we'll hear another of Terry's interviews this one with the 1st American in space Alan Shepard This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air Our next guest on today's show about space exploration is Alan Shepard the 1st American in space in 1961 Alan Shepard rode the Mercury space capsule to an altitude of 115 miles 10 years later after the nearly disastrous flight of Apollo 13 aborted its mission and barely got its astronauts home Shepherd commanded the next mission to the moon Apollo 14 in between those 2 space flights Shepard was grounded for medical reasons but helped direct the space program as chief of NASA as astronaut office 25 years ago when Terry Gross interviewed Alan Shepard about his then new book called Moon shot she asked him about his 1st space flight back in 1961 that trip was so brief he didn't have much time to experiment with weightlessness. My flight was was only 16 minutes we did have about 5 and a half minutes of weightlessness and the thing which we tried to cram into that 5 and a half minutes had to do primarily with with my ability to actually control the spacecraft actually fly like in her point because we knew that so much of the early days of space depended upon the abilities of a pilot not only under primary conditions with no casualties no failures but but also to practice for situations where the pilot would have to take over and order to bring it back and safely so most of the 5 and a half minutes were devoted to my actually controlling spacecraft and reporting. How I was doing that sort of thing how are you doing. I did great of course I would I mean how did it feel to control the spacecraft While be weightless Well there was a tremendous success exhilaration of course at being up there in the 1st place also the 2nd vice and everything fact that everything was going well and then lastly the fact that I had that I flew it exactly as I was supposed to fly it was it what you most wanted to be that 1st American in space Oh I think all of us wanted that we were very highly competitive group start with we were all test pilots we knew that only one of the 7 was going to get to go 1st and. You know everybody wanted to go. During a launch pad test of Apollo one there was a fire in 3 astronauts were killed Gus Grissom Edward White and Roger Chaffee what happened. Well I think. Let me generalize for us and I think what. The situation was at the time was that we had flown successful American revisions we have flown through successful Gemini missions there was a sense of pride in accomplishment but there was also perhaps a little false sense of security maybe a little bit too much pride maybe a little bit. Over confidence if you will and desire obviously to get on with the moon landing to try to meet President Kennedy's schedule. And we talk about this in the book. Pointing out the fact that Ressam who was. Who was designated be the commander of that flight was not at all pleased with some of the things he found in the manufacturing of the testing processes and even though he protested rather strenuously somehow the things needed to be fixed didn't get fixed in time and of course it is a tragedy in fact that Gus was killed in the fire along with Ed White and Roger Chaffee But on the other hand at this stage in the game a low obviously it's traumatic to lose your buddies all of a sudden the NASA people and the and the aerospace contractor people said hey you know this really this thing really wouldn't put together as well as it could have been maybe we weren't too much of a hurry there was some redesign there was a hiatus. Trying to find out exactly what happened and with this redesign with this reassessment we created as spacecraft that was obviously so much better than the Apollo one spacecraft had been I guess and it was really as a result of that fire that all of us on the organization said yes folks we really are doing as well as we could have been and again that resulted in a really fine program all in all you're writing your book that you felt you couldn't get too emotional about it and that you had to take the attitude Well that's part of the business did you have to take that attitude for the benefit of the other men who were waiting to be launched. I think that all of us in those days basically being test pilots felt that. That was the way things go in our business I mean it wasn't the 1st of our friends that have been killed a lot of contemporaries over the years of test mining had been lost killed for one reason or another so it wasn't the 1st time that it happened within our fraternity of test pilots and. As I say it was emotional but it's one of those things where you got to find out what happened corrected and what's going on with the job folks. You were grounded for several years because of an in your problem and then you were able to be cured through a surgical process that surprised everybody by by working and working very well so then you got to go to the moon which you long wanted to do. You know before you landed on the moon you lost your radar and mission control was thinking you should abort but you didn't why didn't you want to abort. You've got to be kidding I mean you have to go into it and 30000 miles you're going to worry about a little radar kind of a little radar I mean what was it like for you to finish up with that red what was behind it without radar Well actually let me just back up a little bit we had a problem earlier on the way out where we couldn't dock with a lunar module that was traumatic. But finally got that resolved and off we went with permission to land we we started down we didn't actually start down but we ran the computer down open loop. And it refused to go down because it was a bad switch. So that was point number 2 either one of those would have are on the mission so we were pretty pretty objective really earned good when we came to the point where during the descent one is not looking at the at the moment you're looking away from the surface and you know wanted to be allowed to continue below around 13000 feet or so one has to have an update from lighting radar we were down around 20000 summer long in there and we were not getting updated on the radar and we were being told from the ground that radar wasn't working we said thank you very much we understand the rate I was not working we can tell that and they reminded us that we didn't have mining radar and by 13000 feet we said you know you remember all that stuff and it was getting pretty tense and pretty close. Finally some bright young guy in the Control Center said hey this this landing radar is working but it's locked on infinity have been recycled pull a circuit breaker and see what happened so we pulled the circuit breaker and sure enough the lining radar came in with a battery of you know maybe half a minute or so to spare we go on down and land and and we're shutting off the switches and my copilot had Mitchell. Said to me Alan What were you going to do with the lending rater I was not in at 13000 feet and I said yeah do you we'll never know. What did you plan on doing. I think I would have gone down at least to the point where we could have pitched over and taken a look at the surface because I had great great faith in our ability to land from almost any phenomenal case we practice that in the simulator for hours and hours and hours and so I had a feeling that if I could just see it and realize I wasn't running into any mountains or anything that I probably would have gone down. What surprised you most about how the surface of the moon blocked. I don't think we had any surprises about the actual surface of the moon about the about the barrenness we had looked at pictures of our landing site taken by previous missions we had worked with the models that were made from. From those pictures. And we knew the general configuration of where the craters was supposed to be we knew the objective of our cone crater which was the one we climbed up the side of to get rock samples were any surprises there the surprise I had was standing on the surface after we'd been there for a few minutes having a cancer rest a little bit and looking up. At the earth for the 1st time really have to look up because that's where it is and this guy he's totally black and here you have a planet which is 4 times the size of the moon as we look at it from the earth and you know have a color you have a blue oceans and a brown land mass is the brown continents and the sea ice on the the ice caps on the North Pole and so on and just an absolute incredible view and then you say hey that looks a little small to me you know the looks. Like it it does have limits it's a little fragile you know down here we think is infinite we worry about resources. Very saying gosh you know it's a shame those folks down there can't get along together and think about trying to conserve to save what limited resources they have and it was just very very emotional I actually shed a couple of tears looking up at the Earth and having those feelings well in Chapter thank you so much for talking with us my pleasure Terry Alan Shepard speaking to Terry Gross in 1904 he died in 1908 at age 74. After a break we'll hear from 2 pilots whose exploits respectively predated and post-dated the Apollo missions test pilot Chuck Yeager and 21st century astronaut Chris Hadfield I'm David Bianculli and this is Fresh Air. You. Know. They knew about our Family Foundation supports w.h.y. Wise fresh air and its commitment to sharing ideas and encouraging meaningful conversation support for n.p.r. 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This is Fresh Air I'm David Bianculli in for Terry Gross continuing today's salute to space exploration 50 years ago tomorrow the Apollo 11 mission successfully landed the 1st man on the moon our next interview is with Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield who spent more than a total of 6 months in space while floating weightless in outer space in the International Space Station in 2013 Hadfield recorded a version of David Bowie's Space Oddity it was turned into a video that at this point in 2019 has over 43000000 hits on Youtube. The same year he recorded that viral video from space in 2013 Hadfield published a memoir and retired from the Canadian space program that's also when he was interviewed by Terry Gross 1st let's hear some of Hadfield's version of Space on. Ground control some agents are. Ground control to me talk. Shows so use such and put your helmet on. Ground control to me. Committer Hadfield welcome to Fresh Air So how many times were you actually out in space out of the capsule or out of the space station. Well I've been so lucky to have done 2 spacewalks if you looked at your wristwatch I was outside about 15 hours which is about 10 times around the world you know during those 15 hours when you were doing spacewalks was there always a technical reason to be out there or was it always part of the mission you always know your record you know what regulations like this is so cool I'm just going to go outside and enjoy it it's a really big deal to do a spacewalk It's much riskier than staying indoors it's complex it uses up a lot of the precious resources onboard uses up oxygen uses up carbon dioxide scrubbers you know we only go out when we absolutely have to whether it's to build something that takes the the ingenuity and dexterity of a person or if it's to fix something if you have an emergency and you need to fix something that broke and those are the only reasons we go outside and we train for it and I detail you you just wouldn't believe to to make it go right now you write in your book that when you did a spacewalk my number one concern was to avoid floating off into. Space which is a pretty major concern like a good good idea here yeah so how are are you tethered to what was at the base station that you were tethered to when I did my spacewalks it was journeying space station construction so the shuttle was docked to the fledgling I assess at the time so you're either clipped to the shuttle or to the space station somewhere there's little handrails and loops and things you can attach to and you go from one to the other like like a high building construction worker or something so you're always tied off so that if your hand did slip you started drifting off into space I mean there's nobody could come rescue you so you have a tether and it reels out to about 50 or 60 feet long if it had to but you also wear a jetpack just in case that tether were to fail you could pull down a handle on your right side a little joystick pops out in front of you you grab it you turn it on and then you can fly yourself with just a simple system of a nitrogen tank and little thrusters but you could fly yourself over and grab back onto the mothership one of the exercises that you basically put yourself through in preparing to be an astronaut as what you describe as what's the next thing that will kill me because there are so many things that can go wrong and be life threatening in space give us a sense of what that what the next thing that will kill me training process is like . Terry I found it to be so helpful in my regular life but of course as an astronaut especially during launch half of the risk of a 6 month flight is of the 1st 9 minutes so as a crew how do you stay focused and how do you not get paralyzed by the fear of it and the way we do it is to break down what are the risks and a nice way to keep reminding yourself is what's the next thing that's going to kill me and it might be 5 seconds away it might be an inadvertent engine shutdown or it might be staging of the solid rockets coming off or it might be you know some transition or some some key next thing we've already say had one computer fail and we've had 100 system fail so if these 3 things fail now we're you know we need to react right away were done so we dig into it so deeply and we look at Ok so this might kill us this is something that would normally panic us let's get ready let's think about it and we go into every excruciating detail of why that might affect what we're doing and have a plan and be comfortable with it and practice it and you say in order to make this work you have to neutralize fear. But I mean it's not like astronauts are braver than other people were just you know meticulously prepared we dissect what it is that is going to scare us and what it is that is a threat to us and then we practice over and over again so that the natural irrational fear is neutralized and your 1st reaction is not just to scream and flee with your hands waving over your head but in fact to go we thought about this and I know that this is dangerous but there are 6 things that I could do right now all of which will help make things better and it's worth remembering to there's no problem so bad that you can't make it worse so so so you have to practice and learn what's the what's the right thing to do but given that it actually gives your really great comfort it's counterintuitive you know to visualize disaster but by visualizing disaster that's what keeps us alive. You have to do some technical work in space what are some of the problems of working in a weight loss. Gravity less atmosphere. It's really non-intuitive having grown up and adapted and expected everything to behave like it does on earth you know if you if you drop your hammer it falls to the floor if you let go of a little tiny washer it doesn't float up and back behind your ear. Something like a fuse you know just in a fuse box you know how it works on Earth there's a little too much electricity we don't want to burn up the house so this little tiny fuse there's a little skinny bit of metal in the middle and it gets hot and melts and then it falls away and it breaks the electrical circuit like nice simple earthbound design Well if you have a fuse like that in space of course the little fuse will get hot and melt but it won't drop away because there's no gravity so the current will continue to flow through the fuse until something else gets hot so something as simple as a few is or a or a fan on a projector or all kinds of stuff where you're counting on convection and gravity They're all have to be rethought and it catches the other where all the time trying to do it my shoe to go running on the treadmill you know it's so easy on earth you bend over do up your shoe but if you think about it when you're doing up your running shoe you are using both hands and one foot and so there's there's nothing to hold you in place anymore the always sit down or lean on something on Earth but if space suddenly your this uncontrolled $180.00 pound mass bouncing off everything else because you just got no free hands anymore and you're just trying to do up your shoes so something as esoteric as as designing cooling systems for standard equipment or something as prosaic as just doing up your shoes you have to rethink it all in order to not be clumsy but also to to be successful when you go to a new environment like that would you describe what it's like to reenter the Earth's atmosphere. It's like riding inside a blast furnace you come into the upper atmosphere and it gets to 3000 degrees on the outside of the ship you can see the orange and yellow flames licking around your vehicle you can hear the the metal responding to the heat in the Soyuz the Little Russian capsule you can actually hear the banging of the of the big shield the big heat shield on the bottom as it slowly erodes away from the heat and pieces of it fly off like sparks across your window and it's an interesting thing to ride through. It's makes you think writing as this little bubble inside a blast furnace the Soyuz it's a very simple rugged tough little design and it it's more like riding a meteorite and if you do everything perfectly you come in with a lot of vibration and about 4 times your weight with 4 g. So after being weightless for half year that's it's really unfair because squish squish like that and if it goes a little bit wrong it reverts to a mode where you don't fly it at all just ballistic and then you pull about 8 or 9 g. And then the parachute opens very violently but then you're just coming down under a parachute but you're bracing yourself for that last 2nd which is impact with the world and you know the so used craft weighs tons and you're lying on the floor of it on your back but the Russians do tell you remember before you land stop talking so you don't bite your tongue off that's all violent the landings going to be and it hits the ground there's little retro rockets that fire the make they cushion it but it still hits the ground like a car crash Ed we land in the prairie's. And so it's always windy so you don't just come straight down to go plunk you hit the ground and then you tumble end over end in this little thing and finally it rolls to a stop. You know an interesting thing about talking to you in reading your book like one of the extra qualifications that you brought to your work as an astronaut is your ability to be a reporter to describe so well what it is you've seen and then send us back reports . You know for for those of us who aren't experts correspondent as exactly oh it's a wonderful thing so thank you for all that I wish you all the best and thanks for doing this interview thanks for bus tour it's been tremendous fun but the whole thing it's a wonderful adventure and I count myself so lucky to have been a part of a Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield speaking to Terry Gross in 2013 his memoir was titled An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth after a break one last interview on our fresh air in space show with test pilot Chuck Yeager whose daring flights blazed the early trail in our country's efforts in the race to land a man on the moon This is Fresh Air. Support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from caring transition the senior move resource to help families ease the stress of life's transition offering relocation. And the resale of everyday household items locations that carry transition. From k. Bucks found in support of the David Gilkey ins Abiola to modern memorial fund established to strengthen N.P.R.'s commitment to training and protecting journalists in high risk environments. This is Fresh Air we'll complete today's salute to space exploration with an interview from 1908 with General Chuck Yeager author Tom Wolfe in his book The Right Stuff called him the most righteous of all the possessors of The Right Stuff Jaeger was a fighter pilot in World War 2 After surviving many Dawn fights he took another risky job testing high performance aircraft and rapidly earned the reputation as America's top test pilot he was the 1st pilot to fly faster than the speed of sound he made that historic flight on October 14th 1907 in an x. One aircraft which he rode 40000 feet high traveling over 660 miles an hour let's start with a clip from the movie The Right Stuff based on Tom Wolfe's best seller Sam Shepherd plays Chuck Yeager their younger. We're just starting to do so care about the sound barrier. And we feel that the x. One is ready to have a go at it we think the x. One's got the answer to go beyond Mach one. If there is any. What do you think. There. Is a bridge. Repairs off you try to go through it. But I just drink from here. So do you think you want to have a go at it. But. It doesn't really exist. How much how much you. I'm just joking the Air Force baby already their answer. Was sure yeah that's when we go. Well how about tomorrow morning. I'll be there that was Sam Shepherd is Chuck Yeager in the film The Right Stuff Terry Gross spoke with Chuck Jaeger in 1988 she asked him about breaking the sound barrier and about the plane he flew to do it the plane that you wrote the sound barrier in the x. One had a nose cone that was designed like a bullet How come yeah because. They knew that bullets flew faster than sound and the old Geiger shape of the of the fuselage of the x. One was shaped like a 50 caliber bullet and that's just common sense because like I say we're flying in the area of unknowns was a constable where you'd have to sit and or know a very uncomfortable in the region was we had no shortage of power and the actual one we used compression nitrogen gas to do all the work like ration lowered the gear and pressurize the liquid oxygen tanks which incidentally they had no seat in the actual When you sat with your back against the bulkhead which contained a liquid oxygen an attempt or the liquid oxygen was 290 degrees below 0 and as one of the coldest cock which ever been in in my life and you sat on the floor and your knees were higher than your your rear end so you could pull high G.'s without blacking out and you couldn't see too well out of it but you got to remember it was a research airplane and it was built in 1904 when you were flying at what indications would you have a kind of meters would tell you well actually broken the sound barrier Well I had an altimeter told me on a high was I had an educated airspeed and that told me how fast I was going through the air in mph but the 11 thing that we relied on was a mock meter. That told us what our percentage was in relationship to the speed of sound fresh at Mach one is the speed of sound at the altitude you. Flying and if you're going point 9 Mach that's 90 percent of the speed of sound and the day that I actually broke Mach one I sat there and watched that Mach meter build up you know sure it would been up to about 94.94.95 Mach number on the previous flight and I watched it build up and when it got up to about point 96 in a buffeting was quite heavy on airplane was shaking pretty bad but then at that point the Mach meter went off the scale f.x. Track related you know to be about $1.00 shakes but the Mach meter only went to 1.0 But when it did all of buffing smoothed out which was an indication we had such you know supersonic flow over the whole airplane meaning that it was flying at supersonic speeds and when it happened we made the 1st sonic boom there did which And that's that's about the way it happened did you hear the sonic boom no no you're in a in the airplane which is in a pressurized cockpit and got a helmet on oxygen mask and and know you're making the shockwave it's on your airplane and it you don't hear shockwave or sonic boom when you realize that you know you'd broken the speed of sound that your mission was accomplished did you stay up in the air awhile and just have a good time to celebrate I didn't know you can stay up because she a rocket you burn out all of you feel as though it had a last 2 and a half minutes and then in your gliding down to make a dead stick landing on Rogers dry lake out there at Edwards Air then mere air base but I sure I was a lady I did a couple rolls on and when I got down since I was pretty well beat up from a horse back riding action in a couple days before I was I was kind of Bush and also you're sitting in a cold airplane or you really get cold so then it's good to get out into the warm sun and. You know and also their program was classified so it's not exactly as as the film The Wright Stuff depicts it we knew it was classified and just a couple 3 of us had a little party that night I mean big party you know a call that one of the reasons for classifying it why was it so top secret because . What we found out in the region was the if you recall of wash we got into the region of the speed of sound we lost our elevator effectiveness and Terry this may get a little technical but all airplanes that light airplanes if you look at them they have a horizontal stabilizer or tail and on the trailing edge of that horizontal stabilizer in elevators or flippers and when you move the control stick back that elevator goes up next what controls the attitude of your airplane makes the nose go up or go down and when we got in to up to about 0.93 Mach number or 93 percent of the speed of sound we lost the effectiveness of that elevator on the x one and we couldn't control our airplane but we had built the capability and of the actual one of moving the whole horse on the stabilizer tail plane and we found out that lo and behold we could control reaction one through mach one with that horizontal stabilizer now it was interesting to me when that happened we found that out then of course we started building flying tails on our airplanes that are combat airplanes that were built 3 or 4 years later and it was amusing to me to find out that the British and the French and the Soviet Union didn't find out that little trick for 5 years that was a reason it was classified and rightly so Chuck Yeager speaking to Terry Gross in 1988 more after a break this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air Let's get back to Terry's 1988 interview with General Chuck Yeager as a test pilot he broke the sound barrier set speed records for flying and flew some extremely dangerous test missions you know this is a very exciting time when you were flying these test missions you had a few close calls all when you were flying the the x one in the at the x one a there was one time I think it was in the x one a which is the follow up plane to the x one where you had gotten to high Well yeah vast area the actual on a on a made for Flight Center but when I have to call a flight I'm setting at some you know 80000 feet going to point 5 Mach number or 2 and a half times the speed of sound around 600 miles an hour and we found out in that during that flight that the tail was not big enough on the x. One to stabilize it like the vertical stabilizer and horizontal stabilizer didn't keep their plane going straight ahead when we got out beyond 2.3 Mach number an airplane to swap vans and went through some wild gyrations and in and back in those days we didn't have a Jackson seat so and you were pretty well. Locked into the airplane and couldn't get out show you have to ride it down and yes I was a little apprehensive about where I was going to hit in the house years out there but fortunately I stayed with the airplane and and had enough instinct to recover from an inverted fan and then pop it out of the normal span and and foundered Rogers drawling come back and land and it was a wild ride but the way I look at it you either do or you don't and you know if you don't you're here live happily ever after so we know you describe what it's like to see the ground coming up at you with a felon and feet per 2nd that's a pretty dramatic image how how do you react I mean how can you think clearly Well you know there are circumstances where you're just like seconds away from well actually meeting there that's you don't think as I mentioned here a few minutes back and rocket you really don't think about the outcome of anything you. Caution trade on survival at the time and you do everything you can to shave your tail and that's what I was doing trying to fight the airplane to recover from the spans and much pressure suit was inflated I was pretty well beat up because of high g. Loads and rattling around an airplane and I didn't pay any attention to the ground because you know nothing do about hitting it anyway they say that some pilots. End up crashing because they take too long to decide whether to jump or land when when the plane has gotten out of control well actually answered an aircraft you know there's human error involved in accidents about 75 percent of the time this could be pallid error or maintenance error or design or something it is in a way human element enters into it and then nearly days when we start flying jet aircraft and we put objection seats in them. Then when a pilot gets himself he always tries to save an airplane and that was one of the transition when we 1st put objection sheets in our fighters that gave us the capability of saving the pilot but you lost the airplane Now one thing at a policy each to do is to leave an airplane because he tries to save it and the way you save a crippled airplane is by dad sticking it or similar or a flame out landing meaning fry to get the airplane on a road or an airplane when you haven't got any power. In order to do this you have to be very good number one and number 2 you've got to have a very good shore 1st and landed on and most pilots will try to get the airplane down on a runway but since they don't have any power they may screw up their pattern or miscalculate on their pattern at the last minute she will I can't possibly get this airplane down safely Allah Jack but by then are too low too for their egress equipment to work or the parachute or the ejection seat so you lose your pallet and your airplane so we went to a period of time back in the fifty's when we had to really discipline powers a if you lose your engine on this airplane you object period and don't fool around with trying to get it down in a dead stick landing. You trained a lot of men who became astronauts do you regret that you missed the period where you could have become an astronaut yourself and gone off into space Well I didn't miss the period actually I was for the space program which started in 1059 The only problem was in order to apply for the space program or the 1st Mercury astronauts you had to have a degree and I did and I had a high school education so I did I wasn't qualified and I didn't apply and I had I been qualified I probably would have applied but I didn't because I was and and but I was perfectly happy with doing the research flying that I'd been doing in the actual on the x. One a and other grafter at Edwards Yeah I'd be funded to fly an airplane like the shuttle I don't I wouldn't particularly care about riding in a capsule like the Mercury Gemini or the Apollo capsule back in the old days but shuttle after different story I'd be fun to fly but on the other hand it be a waste of money to train me you know what well. I get a lot along given a valid me I have one quick question for you and I know I've been woken up several times in the middle of the night especially when I was a child by sonic booms and I was one if that ever happened to you know I know if you don't scare me yes I suppose I'm hardened to it and one thing very few people here sonic boom today because they're they're special corridors for flying faster than the speed of sound in and and you don't hear them too often so no wonder I only remember it from childhood that. I thank you so much for talking with us Ok. Chuck Yeager speaking to Terry Gross in 1908 that interview concludes our salute to space exploration and pilots and astronauts with what Thomas called The Right Stuff . Tomorrow night marks the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's 1st steps on the moon as part of Nash's Apollo 11 mission to wherever you are tomorrow night take a moment to look up and remember and wonder. Monday on the show our guest will be Dr Heider for right cardiologist and author of the new book State of the heart we'll talk about the recent. Breakthroughs in ways to prevent and treat heart failure and he'll also tell us how medicines understanding of healthy blood pressure and good cholesterol is still a lot of you can join us for Terry Gross I'm David. Support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from Progressive Insurance comparing car insurance rates from multiple insurers so shoppers can evaluate options in one place now that's progressive comparisons available at progressive dot com for 1800 progressive. And from Dana Farber Cancer Institute with more than 1200 cancer clinical trials in progress physicians researchers are working to unlock the cancer code more it Dana Farber dot org slash beat cancer. Well the Friday commute was awful this afternoon let's see if things are getting any better Here's keeping with lately in some places 80 southbound still tied up due to the big holes in the roadway the left lanes are blocked there in Oakland the backup is still to that grand northbound $680.00 still being affected by a major accident and it's affecting traffic on the canyon it's making north that $880.00 worse than normal and it's also making the Dublin great commute a little longer than you might used you can keep any wisdom k.q.e.d. Brought to you by un balland dot org. On a really good. Public radio. Tomorrow night at 8 support for k.q.e.d. Comes from u.c.s.f. Health the baker precision cancer medicine building is now open in Mission Bay bringing together leaders in cancer discovery and care to develop new treatments and speed their delivery to patients learn more at u.c.s.f. Health dot org And from better help connecting people in under 24 hours with licensed professional counselors specializing in depressed and stress and anxiety in a safe and private online environment learn more better help dot com slash k.q.e.d. . San Francisco k.q.e.d. I North Highlands 2. Welcome to today's program of the Commonwealth Club I'm Gloria Duffey president and c.e.o. Of the club a nonpartisan nonprofit public forum dedicated to caring diverse views on important topics of the day for 14 years Adam Savage was known for blowing things up and testing wild theories on the popular television show Myth Busters earlier this year he hosted 10 episodes of The Myth Busters junior tell of. Program He recently returned to the Commonwealth Club to talk about what inspires him to build create invent and explore things he was in conversation with Kishore Hari the host of the inquiring minds podcast this program as part of our good lit series underwritten by the Bernardo share foundation Let's join Adam Savage and Kishore hurried for their discussion at the Commonwealth Club. Could evening and welcome to tonight's program hosted by the Commonwealth Club Silicon Valley and by Wonder fest the Bay Area beacon of science I'm Tucker High it is my pleasure to introduce Adam Savage author of Every tools a hammer as a self-proclaimed assess the maker of things Adam has conceived designed and built everything from a 1000 shot Nerf gun to some truly amazing comic con costumes. Adam has worked as a graphic designer animator stage designer special effects artists on dozens of feature films and saw a 5 movies including Star Wars episodes $1.00 and $2.00 Terminator 2 and The Matrix sequels for 14 years Adam was the popular co-host of Discovery Channel's Myth Busters added spinoff Myth Busters Jr He co-hosts his weekly podcast still untitled the Adam Savage project and is the editor in chief of tested dot com Most recently Adam announced his new series savage builds premiering in June on the Science Channel moderating seedings program is because sure Hari host of the inquiring minds podcast ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming Adam Savage and Chris shore Hari. Thank you. Thank you. This is an awesome venue to be I know I apologize in advance for worrying a hat indoors but I'm just having a bad hair week and this is how dealing with it. Oh we have to start talking about this book it's a celebration of obsession. And I've known Adam for a little while obsession is his hallmark characteristic but I have to admit growing up my parents.